Creating at home. Eating out. Wine tasting. Culinary adventures in Seattle and around the world.

Watermelon Sorbet and More…

09-Feb-2005

After my weekend brunch I have tons of leftover fruit. While I’m eating it like crazy there’s just more than a single person can handle! When I bought the watermelon I had sorbet in the back of my mind. So yesterday I finally got back to my sorbet experimentation.

Remembering that the Mango-Banana Sorbet was a little sweeter than I prefer, I made a few adjustments to balance that out a bit. However, I wanted to be careful about reducing the sugar too much because doing so would make the sorbet freeze too solidly. (If you saw the Alton Brown "Good Eats" episode, Melondrama, you’ll know what I mean!) In fact, to carry on with that idea, both the sugar and the alcohol in these recipes play a factor in keeping the sorbet pleasantly "scoopable". The sugar also flavors but the amount of alcohol is so small, it really does not affect flavor at all.

I came very close to getting this perfect! It’s still just a tad bit too sweet for me but this was an especially sweet melon. If I make this again and the melon is as sweet, I’ll probably reduce the sugar by 1/4 cup and increase the vodka by 1 Tbsp.

Something to remember, when you make your own, is that the mixture before it is frozen tastes sweeter than after it is frozen. If that wasn’t the case it would be easier to get this exactly to taste, as you could adjust ingredients while mixing it all up. All in all, I’m happy with this version though.

Watermelon Sorbet

1 pound, 5 oz watermelon (I meant to do an approximate cup measurement for you and forgot.)

4 Tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice (or use lemon if you prefer)

2 Tbsp. Vodka

1 cup sugar

Place watermelon in food processor or blender and process until smooth. Add lime juice, vodka and sugar and process another 30 seconds. Place mixture in refrigerator until thoroughly chilled, 1 or more hours.

Pour chilled mixture into ice cream maker and process according to manufacturer’s instructions. Place sorbet in covered container and freeze until it reaches desired consistency, 3 to 4 hours.

I still had quite a lot of watermelon remaining so, while I had my food processor out, I cut up a bunch more, added a little sugar to it (again more for consistency than flavor) and filled several ice cube trays with the mixture. Then into the freezer they went. Once they were frozen I popped the cubes out of the trays and into plastic freezer bags and then put the bags into the freezer. I’m thinking these are going to be the basis of a lovely and refreshing beverage such as a "Watermelon Martini’! I’ll be trying that out in the next day or two and I’ll let you know how my experiment goes! :-)

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